


Make Hay While the Sun Shines

by spinninginfinity



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3932626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinity/pseuds/spinninginfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At an event during Santos' reelection campaign, Josh and Donna find themselves locked in a barn. Donna copes, Josh not so much.</p><p>
  <i>A thought strikes him. ‘Have chickens ever been known to attack humans?’</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Hay While the Sun Shines

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on tumblr: "Looks like we'll be trapped here for a while."

‘I think I see someone,’ Josh says.

‘Ten minutes ago you thought you saw someone and it turned out to be a tree,’ Donna reminds him.

He continues to squint through the tiny crack in the barn door. ‘I really think that’s a person.’

She sighs, standing and brushing hay off her skirt. ‘Let me look,’ she says, nudging him out of the way.

‘Right there,’ he says, standing on tiptoe so he can look through another split in the wood slightly higher up. ‘You see behind that tractor thing?’

‘It—yep. That’s the same tree as before.’

‘Oh.’ Josh stands back at his normal height, forlorn. ‘I thought it was a person.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘I know that now.’

‘Josh, I think you need to resign yourself to the fact that we’re gonna be trapped here for a while,’ Donna says. She sits back down on the hay bale she’s been occupying since their hellish ordeal began, by Josh’s estimate, around three-and-a-half hours ago.

‘How long have we been in here so far?’ he asks.

She shrugs. ‘Thirty minutes?’

‘It’s longer than that.’

‘Nope.’

Josh takes his cellphone out again, and yes, okay, it looks like she’s right about the time. ‘No service. How the hell do these people live, Donna?’

‘Hey, “these people” are called Mr. and Mrs. Keener, and they very generously let us hold a rally on their land and provided us with the best breakfast I’ve had across four presidential campaigns, so be nice.’ She watches him as he stares at his phone screen for a few moments. ‘Josh. Pull up a bale and just chill, okay?’

‘How am I supposed to chill? How are you so chilled right now?’ he demands. ‘No one knows we’re in here! What if we’re never found?’

‘First of all, you’re the one who got us locked in here,’ she reminds him, ‘so don’t get snippy at me.’

‘Yeah, well, how was I supposed to know the latch was—’

‘Second of all,’ Donna says, raising her voice, ‘not to deny you a good opportunity to be melodramatic, but you’re the White House chief of staff, so I’d have thought someone might come looking for you after a while. Plus we’re on a working farm. We are literally sitting next to the hen house.’ She nods toward the chicken coop over by the wall.

‘Right. Okay.’ A thought strikes him. ‘Have chickens ever been known to attack humans?’

‘Oh my god,’ she says, ‘I’m never letting you outside ever again.’

‘I’m just wondering, in large numbers, whether it’s totally impossible that a gang of chickens could—’

‘A _gang_ of chickens?’

‘I’m saying—’

‘I’m married to the most ridiculous man,’ she sighs. ‘Okay. Come and look at this.’

‘I swear I’ve heard of at least one time that happened,’ he mutters, reluctantly following her over to the coop. It’s mostly built from wire, with a small doorway leading outside (he’s already sized it up; he’d never get his shoulders through), and there are wooden laying boxes at one end with hinged tops, one of which Donna reaches for.

‘Wait, what are you doing?’ Josh asks.

‘Showing you our deadly foe. Stand behind me,’ she warns him, ‘in case it decides to strike.’

‘Haha,’ Josh says, but does shuffle so she’s shielding him a little.

Donna opens the box. ‘Hello, girl. Are you nesting?’ 

‘Should we really be disturbing her?’ he asks, standing on tiptoe to peer over Donna’s shoulder at the plump brown hen sitting inside. It fixes them with what he can only describe as a baleful stare, eye beady and unblinking.

‘She’s fine,’ Donna says, reaching down to stroke her fingers very lightly along the chicken’s back. The chicken makes a soft clucking sound and settles down further into the straw.

Josh clutches Donna’s arm. ‘She’s not gonna get pissed off? She’s not gonna go into defense mode or—?’

‘I think you’re thinking of mother bears. Or advanced weapons systems.’

‘What would you have done if there hadn’t been one in there?’

‘Then our deadly foe would have been straw and maybe a couple freshly-laid eggs,’ she says, closing the box again and going to sit back down. ‘Now, would you please calm down a little and just wait this out in a way that doesn’t make me consider strangling you?’

The outermost bales are stacked like steps, and she leans back against the one behind her. With her long linen skirt, loaned rubber boots, and mussed hair, she looks like something straight out of one of those crappy romance novels she owns that he definitely hasn’t read.

‘Josh,’ she says after a moment. ‘You’re looking at me like you want to tear my clothes off.’

‘What? No.’ He clears his throat. ‘It’s just, you know, you have a certain, you know, sort of fresh-faced farm girl…’ he waves his hand vaguely at her, ‘…look about you right now.’

‘Ah.’ 

‘Yeah. Just thinking, if you’re looking for a way to pass the time that doesn’t make you want to kill me—’

‘A literal roll in the hay?’ she asks.

‘To which your response will hopefully be the total opposite of murderous. But I think we should keep our clothes on, mostly,’ Josh says, coming to sit next to her and sweeping his hand across the bale. ‘Seems like it could be pretty itchy, otherwise.’

‘Fine,’ she says, rolling her eyes and reaching for him. ‘We can just make out a lot.’

‘Sounds great. Hey, wait.’ He glances anxiously at the stack of bales behind them. ‘There’s no way all this could collapse on top of us, right?’

‘Josh.’

‘Shutting up,’ he says, and kisses her.

***

‘That was okay, in the end,’ Josh says, swinging their joined hands as they head back to the house, following a little way behind the Keeners’ sixteen-year-old daughter, who eventually showed up to free them, a story he’d really rather didn’t get out. ‘Not a terrible way to spend a couple hours.’

‘Yes,’ Donna says. ‘And I have to hand it to you for not freaking out even once about the biting hay spiders.’

_‘What?’_

She stops for a moment, reaching over and picking a piece of hay out of his hair. ‘Seriously,’ she tells him, grinning. ‘Never letting you outside again. You’re not built for it. You should just stay in our bed.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Get yourself some rubber boots and that’ll suit me absolutely fine.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback welcome and appreciated as always!


End file.
